Digital Branch of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Oral History Program

Joseph "Joe" Beetus

Joe Beetus was a Koyukon Athabascan elder from Hughes, Alaska. He was born in 1915 and raised around Allakaket until he was about 14 when his family moved down to the Hughes area. His mother was Ida and his father Leon. Leon was a prominent member of the community that coalesced around the Episcopal Mission, St. John's-in-the-Wilderness, that was built by Hudson Stuck in l907-08 at the site that became the village of Allakaket. Leon died not long after Joe was born, and his mother married Little Beetus, who was from around South Fork. Joe grew up largely in camp, particularly in the Kanuti or Old Man River area. He grew up living a traditional subsistence lifestyle of hunting, trapping and fishing and moving camp as the season changed. Joe married Celia Koyukok in 1938, who was the daughter of Jimmy and Annie Koyukuk, and also from the Allakaket area. Joe and Celia continued to follow this traditional pattern with their own children until 1957 when a school was built in Hughes, and they settled in the village permanently. Throughout much of his adult life, Joe trapped and hunted in the winter from a cabin base camp on Hog or Hogatsa River, north and east of Hughes. Joe also worked in local mining camps in the summer. Joe was well known in the Koyukon region for his talents as a singer and composer of traditional and ceremonial songs. At the time of his 1992 interview, Joe was one of the relatively few men who was still active in this pursuit, which used to be almost entirely a man's province. Traditional style songs were composed for and sung primarily at memorial potlatches.

Joe and Celia Beetus were interviewed on November 15, 1992 by Wendy Arundale in Fairbanks, Alaska. When we made this tape, Joe and Celia Beetus were visiting Fairbanks for the Athabascan Fiddling Festival. I picked them up downtown on a Sunday afternoon, and we drove to the campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Because it was a quiet place to work, we taped sitting around one end of the big conference table in the Institute of Arctic Biology's library, a place where we've taped together before. The tape began with Joe talking about his childhood growing up in the Allakaket area. He talked about several of the places where his family camped, activities that they undertook, and the general outline of their seasonal round. He also talked at the beginning of the tape about how he and Celia had raised their family with everyone going to trapping camp in the winter. This pattern continued until l957 when the school was established in Hughes, and the children were required to attend. Toward the mid-l950s, Joe began hiring Wien Alaska Airlines to fly his family and even some of his dogs to camp. It was the easiest way to get his large family, which by then included eight children, to camp. Joe and Celia both recalled incidents from the time when their kids were growing up, but Joe's contributions also included memories of several of the old-timers from around Hughes, some of whom Steven Attla also remembers. They include Joe Hoagland, Ernie Wingfield, and Les James. Joe also talked some about Wilfred Evans who had a store at Alatna. Joe also commented on how he learned to sing, what singing means, and how many of the "high words," the special vocabulary used in songs and speeches on formal, ceremonial occasions, have been lost, even to people of his generation. Celia talked about her own growing up in the Allakaket area. Her family, like Joe's, spent a lot of time in camp. She talked about various camps where they stayed, some like Tsaalatna, in the Old Man or Kanuti River area. She also talked some about her family's fish camp below Allakaket. She recalls how she and Joe were married by Bishop Bentley in a group ceremony with Martha and Abraham Oldman, and Henry and Sophie Beetus. Such ceremonies were not unusual, for the bishop would make a trip up the river almost every year by boat, holding services, baptizing babies, and marrying couples along the way. Toward the end of the tape, Joe makes a very heartfelt and eloquent statement about what he feels agency employees and park visitors should know about Native people and the land. He points out that subsistence is integral to Native people's way of life. His very basic question, "How would Native people make a living without subsistence?" addresses more than just how would people put food on the table and wood in the stove, although those issues are very basic to his statement as well. He recognizes the need for some regulation, but he also sees the need for a greater understanding of and meaningful involvement of local users. Although legally, parts of the land may belong to the federal government, in cultural and emotional terms it is still Koyukon land and Joe makes a strong case for treating it as such. In concluding the tape, Celia echoes Joe's sentiments and concerns for how their children and grandchildren will make a living if the land and the right to harvest its resources is taken away from them.

We met with Joe and Celia Beetus, Susie Williams' brother, on February 19, 2003 at their home in Hughes, Alaska. Joe and Celia have contributed to the Gates of the Arctic National Park Project Jukebox in the past and invited us to their home to learn more about their lives in Hughes over the last sixty-four years. Joe is the oldest elder in Hughes and he made us feel very welcome in the community the night before at the Gates of the Arctic Project Jukebox presentation we made in the community hall. While we were showing the project, Joe began to tell stories about the photos and the people in the program and the others in attendance were all very enthusiastic about his experiences. Currently, Joe is spending one day a week at the school sharing his accounts and the history of the area with the students. Joe and Celia spent quite some time looking for photographs that we might be able to use in the Jukebox program and were very eager to share them with us. Joe is losing his hearing, so during the interview we relied on Celia to help us explain things to him. Joe and Celia open their house to everyone in the community, so there were people coming and going as well as multiple phone calls thoughout our visit. Everyday life in Hughes keep these two busy. The walls of their home were covered with pictures of their family, and Joe explained several of the older pictures hanging on the walls. Margaret Williams was also present during the interview and she encouraged Joe and Celia to talk about their photos. The original unedited version of this interview is available in the Alaska and Polar Regions Collections and Archives at Elmer E. Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks.